Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river! Earth of the limpid grey of clouds, brighter Smile, for your lover comes! modern cant puts it) is capable of being strained into very narrow limits. One "poem " contains at least the germ of all the sheaves and sheaves of writing that Whitman published. There is not one aspect of his nature which is not stated, or more than broadly hinted at, in the single piece which he named All this represents the best side of after himself, "Walt Whitman." It the author; but "Walt Whitman" exwas appropriately named, for an un-hibits his bad sides as well — his bruclothing of himself, an invitation to all tality, mis-styling itself openness, his the world to come and prove that, toleration of the ugly and the forbidstripped of his clothes, he was exactly den, his terrible laxity of thought and like everybody else, was the essence fatuity of judgment. of his religion, his philosophy, and his poetry. If he reads "Walt Whitman" carefully, a reader of middle life will probably come to the conclusion that the best way to classify the wholly anomalous and irregular writer who produced it is to place him by himself as a maker of poems in solution. I am inclined to admit that in Walt Whitman we have just missed receiving from the New World one of the greatest of modern poets, but that we have missed it must at the same time be It is not unfair to concentrate attention on the section of sixty pages which bears the name "Walt Whitman" in the volume of his collected writings. It is very interesting reading. No truly candid person meeting with it for the first time, and not previously prejudiced against it, could but be struck with its felicities of diction and its air of uncontrolled sincerity. A young man of generous impulses could acknowledged. To be a poet it is not scarcely, I think, read it, and not fall necessary to be a consistent and origiunder the spell of its sympathetic illu- nal thinker, with an elaborately balsions. It contains unusually many anced system of ethics. The absence of those happy phrases which are, I of intellectual quality, the superabuncontend, the sole purely literary pos- dance of the emotional, the objective, session of Whitman. It contains the pictorial are no reasons for underdozens of those closely packed lines in valuing Whitman's imagination. But each of which Whitman contrives to there is one condition which distinconcentrate a whole picture of some guishes art from mere amorphous exaction or condition of nature. It con-pression; that condition is the result tains, perhaps, the finest, certainly the of a process through which the vague most captivating, of all Whitman's natural apostrophes : Press close, bare-bosom'd night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing night! Night of south winds! night of the large few stars! Still, nodding night! mad, naked summer Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath'd earth! Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, and engaging observations of Whitman never passed. He felt acutely and accurately, his imagination was purged of external impurities, he lay spread abroad in a condition of literary solution. But there he remained, an expause of crystallizable substances, waiting for the structural change that never came; rich above almost all his coevals in the properties of poetry, and yet, for want of a definite shape and fixity, doomed to sit forever apart from the company of the poets. EDMUND GOSSE. From The Nineteenth Century. the whole, and the motif is never of a Chinese source. It is rather with the A LARGE and choice collection of illustrations to the old Japanese literaJapanese lacquer and metal ware has ture, especially with those to the medlately been brought together at the iæval tales of chivalry known as the Burlington Fine Arts Club. During "Ise" and "Genji Monogatari,” that the somewhat laborious process of the general plan of the decoration is classifying, arranging, and cataloguing, connected. But although the Japanese nothing was more prominent than the say that the game is an ancient one, large number of objects connected in none of the examples in European colone way or another with the burning of lections, as far as I know, have any incense. Not only among the bronzes, claim to an earlier date than the beginwhich included censers of every de- ning of the last century. Without the scription and design, but, where it was aid of illustrations it would be tedious less to be expected, among the smaller to describe in any detail the various objects of lacquer exhibited, we found objects and their uses, but some genthat in a majority of cases the delicate eral idea may be given of this cerelittle boxes so much prized by collectors monial game, which it is said was only had formerly served to hold incense of played among the court nobles and the fragrant woods. Other large boxes aristocracy. I have a small illustrated there were, also of the very choicest manuscript devoted to this subject, lacquer, containing smaller ones ar- but although the various pieces are ranged on trays, and sometimes other carefully drawn, there is no information objects, as miniature braziers and pack- beyond the mere names written at the ets of illuminated paper. Larger still, side. measuring perhaps a foot each way, To play the game various kinds of are the boxes containing the complete incense and of fragrant wood are burnt equipment for the ancient Japanese either alone or in combination by one game of perfumes, or more literally of the players, and it is the duty of the "incense arrangement (Kō-awase).1 others, of whom there would appear to There are so many points of interest be three, to show that they recognized connected with this game, and the the perfumes by placing counters in ground is, as far as I know, so com- certain positions on a chequered board. pletely unexplored, that it may be We find, then, within the case, or small worth while to give a somewhat de- cabinet, one or more smaller boxes, or tailed account of these objects and the it may be brocade cases, containing uses to which they were put. carefully folded bags of silk or gilt paper in which the incense is kept. Another box contains the fragrant woods and the charcoal for the brazier. With a small silver spatula, sometimes delicately inlaid with enamel, the incense is taken from its case and placed upon a silver-framed plate of mica, about an inch square; then with a silver forceps, inlaid like the spatula, the little mica plate supporting the pinch of incense is held over a small brazier provided with an open-work cover of silver, in which a few pieces of carefully prepared charcoal are glowing upon a well-smoothed bed of ashes. Closely packed, then, in a square box of lacquer, or it may be arranged in the drawers and on the shelves of a miniature cabinet, we find a number of elaborate implements. The greater lacquer artists of the eighteenth century, the Komas, the Kajikawas, and the Shunshos — but like other important objects of old lacquer they are never signed – had expended their highest skill not only in the decoration of the case, but also in that of the various contents. One scheme of decoration runs through 1 There were two sets of the perfume game displayed in the club exhibition, and the information given above is chiefly derived from the very complete account contributed to the catalogue by Mr. William Gowland. The boxes described belong to Sir Trevor Lawrence and to Mr. James Gurney. By the side we have a tray of lacquer with a number of medallions of mother-of-pearl, each in the shape of a correct one, the Japanese may claim to have developed the sense of smell to a higher point than we Western nations have any conception of. It is not a case, as with us, of the placid enjoy chrysanthemum flower, or it may be of Quite apart from the exquisite beauty a maple leaf. When the incense is and finish of the apparatus, there is ignited the mica plate is placed to cool one point of surpassing interest in this upon one of the medallions. Now ap-game. If the interpretation given is a parently is the time for the other players to show their skill, by choosing the counter corresponding to the perfume burnt, and placing it in its proper position on the chequer board. These counters there are one hundred and|ment of a simple stimulus, as when we twenty of them in the set we are de- smell a rose or the scent on a handkerscribing are thin, oblong slips of chief, but here there is an intellectual dark wood, about an inch in length. effort made to distinguish one variety On one side is inscribed a number, 1, of stimulus from another, and even to 2, or 3, thirty counters for each num-analyze a compound odor into its eleber; this accounts for ninety; on the ments. This we may compare to a remaining thirty the character for the case of a musician naming the different word "guest" is written. The guest notes of the scale, or separating the is probably the player who is "in several elements which are combined hand"— that is, burning the incense. to form a harmony. On the other side of the counters we Surely there is a suggestion in this of find a series of ten subjects, charming a new branch of art, which I recomlittle miniature paintings, twelve count- mend especially to our French neighers for each subject. Such a series bors, and to those among us who are generally includes various flowers and eager for fresh fields of aesthetic enbirds, or maybe an insect, the moon, or joyment. I think that the symbolic a strange geometrical design resem- school of poets, and especially those bling snow crystals. In one of the sets who in their verses lay claim to the gift the subjects are the ten kinds of mu- of associating visions of color with the sical instruments used for the old court various vowel sounds of their language, music. I have passed over a number might with less difficulty evolve associof small implements, some for arrang-ations between perfumes and sounds, ing the charcoal in the brazier and testing its temperature, others of uncertain use. In the more complete boxes we find, in addition, a set of miniature tools, a saw, a chisel, a knife, and a hammer, to be employed in cutting up the fragrant woods. Finally, in one instance, room is found for a writing-box (suzuri-bako), so that check may be kept of the progress of the game, or notes made upon interest-no-dzu or incense diagrams. The manner probably ing points. the text, some additional facts that he has collected bearing on the use of incense in Japan. Incense, according to Japanese antiquaries, was brought to Japan by the Buddhist missionaries in the sixth century A.D. The earliest mention of an incense game is in the "Genji Monogatari," a romance of the tenth century, which deals chiefly with the amorous intrigues of an exiled prince. This is one of the most well-known works of the old court literature. We often find that the chap ters are headed by a series of diagranis made up of horizontal and vertical lines, known as the Ko in which these lines are joined refers in some way to different combinations of perfume. The period of the revival of arts at the close of the fifteenth century under the Ashikaga Shogun Yoshimasa is regarded as the time when the perfume game was what was burnt, natural woods and gum-resins exuding from certain trees are vaguely referred to by the authorities, but it is said the materials most fully organized and most in vogue. As to I have so far been unable to find out what kinds of fragrant woods, whether native or imported, and what varieties of incense were employed. In all the sets that I have examined the papers were empty, and the inscriptions on them referred only to the designs on the counters. Tradition says that when the game was played, no scented flow-jatai, which were brought to Japan (I suppose from Korea or China) in the eighth century. The ers were allowed in the room.1 art of perfumes is referred to in the old books as differed with the various schools of players. There is preserved at the temple of Shōsō-in, at Nara, some specimens of a scented wood, known as Ran 1 Mr. Kowaki sends me, too late for insertion in the Kō-dō, the road or doctrine of incense. for we well know that no sense has a | of a once powerful mechanism. With stronger power of suggestion than that this," he says, "we may connect the of smell. I have a suspicion, but no fact that the olfactory fibres have conproof, that some association of this nected with them virtually a whole sort, whether with sound or sight, is segment of the brain (the olfactory sought by the Japanese in the little lobes)." He further points out that pictured counters that we have de- the olfactory sensations seem to have scribed. an unusually direct path to the inner It would seem that the idea of rais- working of the nervous system. As ing the olfactory sense to the level of related to this close connection with an art has occurred to others before the higher nervous centres he mennow. The French archæologist Didron tions the powerful reflex effects of a took a special interest in this inquiry, few odorous particles which may cause and there are many allusions to it fainting or dizziness, and also the wellscattered through his "Annales Ar-known action of smells as links of chéologiques." I find there a story association. (which, by the way, I strongly suspect of being apocryphal) of a poor peasant from Brittany, of a dreamy and eccentric nature, who invented an "art of perfumes " while musing over the scents of the flowers of his native fields. He claimed to have discovered the harmonious relation existing between odors. He came to Paris with a perfume box of many compartments to give a 'concert of perfumes," passed, however, for a madman, and returning to his native home died in obscurity. 66 The surpassing importance of the sense of smell among the lower forms of animal life is obvious and need not be dwelt upon here. I would, however, call to mind that from the point of view of the evolutionist it is as a means of attracting the various forms of insect life, and transferring by their agency the pollen of one flower to the stigma of another, that the scent of flowers is to be regarded; not in order to please us, else why should we find flowers whose smell resembles carrion ? Again, more than one ingenious Again, in the lower forms of vertebrate person has constructed a scale of life, nothing is more striking than the perfumes, finding parallels between inordinate size of the olfactory lobes, different scents and the notes of an in comparison with the rest of the octave. There are, indeed, points of resemblance between the terminations of the olfactory nerve on the surface of the mucous membrane which lines the passages at the back of the nose, and the arrangement at the end of the nerve of hearing known as the organ of Corti. In fact, certain physiologists have gone so far as to doubt whether the stimulus to the olfactory nerve be really a mechanical one, rather than some form of vibratory movement. brain. These projecting lobes form the very forefront of the whole nervous system, and although in the higher forms of life they are completely masked by the cerebral lobes that spread out over them, their position in regard to the central columu of the nervous system remains the same. For this reason, in the long series of cerebro-spinal nerves the pair that couveys the sensation of smell to the brain has the first place, and is known to anatomists as Nerve No. 1. We nowadays pay so little heed to the pleasures to be derived from the It would seem, then, that in man the sense of smell, and are at such pains to nerves and brain centres that subserve avoid contact with unpleasant odors, the sense of smell are poorly develthat there is a danger of our losing the oped, in some degree vestigial, strucsense altogether. Professor Michael tures. It would not be too strong a Foster, treating the subject from the statement to make that in civilized point of view of the comparative biolo-man, and especially in the Englishman gist, recognizes this sense in man as of the present day, this sense remains in some degree vestigial, "the remuant merely as the vestige of a vestige. Consider the large part played by the means of this sense; it is quite certain sense of smell in the life of a dog. that, with such an advantage, a perOr take the case of a wild animal. To fume game far exceeding in complicaobtain food for itself, and to avoid tion that of the Japanese might be being eaten, these are the essential devised, and so provided a man, were points, and it would fare badly with he both blind and deaf, might form the hunting or the hunted animal were it to lose anything of the delicacy of its flair. Compare with this the importance in our modern life and the amount of practical advantage which we derive from "a good nose." Not but that cases arise when fatal effects may follow from neglect of the warning which we receive from a bad smell, for it would seem that it is to the bad smell which warns us rather than to the pleasant odor which attracts us that we attach most importance. It may be well to point out here that a large part of what we regard as gustatory pleasures and pains are strictly to be credited to the sense of smell. The aroma of wine and the flavor of spices have their source not on the tongue or palate but in the remote chambers and passages that extend far back under the base of the skull, and over the surface of which the olfactory nerves are distributed. So much is this the case that we may claim for our sense of smell nearly all that is most refined and elaborated in the pleasures of the table. Again, it has been said that this sense is intellectually put out of court as a source of information about the external world by the absence of any muscular connections. It is generally held that it is from the combination of our muscular sense with the purely passive elements of sight and touch that we derive our conception of an external world. But these muscular connections are not so completely absent in the case of smell as they are in that of taste. Witness the movements of the nostrils in a dog, or even in some men, in the operation we know as sniffing. Indeed, were we to take an imaginative flight and suppose ourselves provided with a flexible proboscis, whether artificial or developed in the course of ages, there is no knowing to what intellectual and æsthetic heights we might attain by many inferences as to the external world. And here I may mention the case of the boy James Mitchell, often quoted in medical works; he was a deaf mute and blind from birth, “but distinguished people by their smell, and by means of it even formed judgments as to their character." This was an intellectual development of our poor sense with a vengeance. A sense that at the dawn of civilization was a declining one, and since then has tended to become less and less of value, would appear to have little chance of gaining an important position in any branch of human culture. And yet it came about that one characteristic of the exciting cause of odors brought them into prominence in the service of religion, and this prominence has continued in that connection up to the present day. Far back in the history of our race, at any rate long before the dawn of history, the apparently immaterial and, so to speak, ghostly nature of the exciting cause of the sensations of smell led, it would seem, step by step, to the use of incense in the service of the gods. When it began to be felt that the ancestral or other spirit that had to be appeased was hardly of a nature to consume the material food or drink offered to it, to appease its wrath or to gain its favor, an easy step of reasoning suggested that this food or liquid would be more acceptable in the form of smoke or vapor. The gods had become of too spiritual a nature actually to eat the food, but they would still require some form of nourishment, and what could be more suitable to them than the fumes of burnt flesh? This is the conception that is prominent, or at all events survives, in the description of sacrifices in the Iliad, where the thick clouds from the burning thighs of the slaughtered oxen, and from the fat in which they were wrapped, ascend to |